Be Mindful of Your Outrage
Be outraged, but be mindful of what that means.
There is some absolutely bizarre shit happening in the world today. Between the utterly messed up political machine in the US, the Russian oligarchy and Putin, and the ongoing Israel/Palestine debacle, it feels like all reason and sanity have left the building.
And maybe it has. Rational, reasonable, multifaceted debate has given way to loud, opinionated, factless shouting. Civil discourse has been replaced by baseless, repetitious, utterly false jingoism and worse. Insane rantings and unrealistic beliefs frequently overrule well-researched and scientifically proven facts.
If you are in any way, shape, or form a rational, reasonable human being, it’s all too easy to be outraged by it all. Then, via outrage, you lash out and share the latest surreal power-grab; hateful, spiteful law or executive order; and other unhinged bullshit.
Becoming outraged can be a wake-up call that can drive action to make change. However, being mindful of your outrage – and what you do with it – is important.
Old man shouts at the cloud
It is important to know what’s happening in the world at large. We need to be aware. However, there’s knowledge, and then there’s oversaturation.
There is no need to dig into every single minute, petty, ridiculous detail about that person or thing. You don’t need to do a deep dive into the psychology, sociology, or other finer details of the subject. Yes, knowledge is power, but what good does knowing every little nuance of the matter do you?
The truth is that it makes you angrier. It adds to the frustration, the uncertainty, and, ultimately, the outrage. You dig deep enough, and you will become a ranting, raving, highly angered person trying to find logic and reason where there is none.
What’s more, the deeper you dig, the more you’ll see less and less that you can do about it. While it’s good to dig out the roots of your own internal, subconscious life, the same is not necessarily true of what’s outside of you.
Why? Because you cannot change anyone or anything outside of you and what you can internally and externally touch. You can’t make that person doing that awful, hateful thing, see your perspective of it, and stop doing it.
Outrage is all well and good for motivating you to action. But when you are not mindful of it, you will shout at the cloud and stir anger, resentment, fear, and hopelessness. Why? Because no solutions are being sought while more troubles are piled up.
Be mindful of your outrage
Again, I’m not at all saying that you shouldn’t be outraged. By all means, please see that you should be. But recognize where you can and can’t do something about the situation and apply conscious awareness from there.
Why? Because if you desire to have any control of your life experience, you need to begin within yourself. Take your outrage and campaign for a better candidate, attend a protest, boycott the terrible business, send emails, make calls, and do things to act.
Strengthen yourself. Via mindfulness, you learn who, what, where, how, and why you are. That might not seem like much, but how do you think these awful people come to power? Because people who don’t know who, what, where, how, and why they are look without for the answers. Sure, you can find some guidance outside of yourself, but not the answers. That’s because the answers exist in you. You are the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Ergo, you alone think what you think, feel what and how you feel, choose your intentions and a positive or negative approach, and act or not.
You cannot change anything without until you begin to work within yourself. That is not selfish or self-serving; it’s a matter of self-care.
Start within
Becoming consciously aware – mindful – of yourself is the first step in any control you can exert. Much of this is due to the fact that the only real control you have is over yourself, your inner being.
When you seek to learn who, what, where, how, and why you are, you gain clarity and become empowered. Since the only control you truly have is of yourself, you need knowledge of yourself to exert that control.
From that knowledge, you can take your outrage at the external matters of the world and see ways to help change the collective consciousness for the better. In that way, by being mindful of your outrage, you can use it to effect real, positive, useful change.
Every big idea started in one mind, head, heart, and soul. Fueled by necessity, desire, outrage, and the like, it was made manifest. Mindfulness of your outrage could lead to action you won’t find in mindless, heedless outrage. You are empowered to do something with that, and mindfulness of this truth is how you act on it.
Becoming mindful of your outrage isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge what outrages you, and that you can do little to nothing about the big-picture issues around you, you can use mindfulness to take action to do something useful with it. Knowing that you can start small, with yourself, to do something impactful, can be the catalyst to take outrage and make manifest something alternative to whatever that thing/happening is for the betterment of both yourself and others.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. From that broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, that can spread to those around you for their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred-and-eighty-third (583) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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